Finish every painting!! Paintbox Tip #8

When I go back to an unfinished painting I often have a wee panic.
​First of all, I don't want to work on this painting again - I'm over it and I've got a superb new idea and I just want to get going on that!
As a professional artist - my only source of income, this attitude is a BIG problem. Every creative moment, every piece of watercolour paper,  every brush load of paint is wasted if I don't finish. Time is money!!
To get myself back in the mode, I re-create my thumbnail sketches, review my reference images, notes and hopefully I'm on fire again!!
BUT, what if that fire doesn't return? When the buzz is gone, my smile fades and panic returns.
This is when I need to kick my artist's discipline into gear and make myself finish.
Here's my secret process for finishing every painting:

1. I spend 5 minutes reviewing the artwork to-date and write a critique. what do i like? what do i not like? is my focal point/area speaking out loudly? if not what does it need for that happen?
2. I also write a 'shopping list' of actions. I remind myself of my motivation and inspiration for this piece, my observations, inspiration, process ideas, thumbnails and design concepts.
3. Then, I work through design principles to ensure I've covered enough bases to create an emotive, atmospheric painting.
   ie, 
   COLOUR does the colour create passage around the painting? can you label your dominant colour/value? the non-dominant colour/value and the accent colour/value? if not make it happen.
   VALUE I mentioned value above but to give you another example, are your darks dark enough? if not do you need to add a super dark? 
   EDGES is there a good variety of edges? hard, rough and soft? 
   SHAPES do your shapes need extra work? 
   SPACE is there are good balance of shapes and space? To repeat, a dominant shape, a non-dominant shape and an accent shape (aka big medium small)? 
   TEXTURE/DETAIL enough detail, too much detail? does it look finished?
4. My FOCAL AREA might need some help to speak loudly? possibly less work in the background and more detail in the focal area.

​When all else fails, turn the timer on for 5 minutes!! giving yourself just 5 minutes will force adrenaline to flow and force you to make decisions without procrastination. It will force you to focus on the process and not worry about the next step, in other words, just do it!!
You've probably heard me say this before ... there is more learning value in finishing a painting than starting yet another painting you can't finish. A lot of it is in your initial preparation, the notes you make, the stories you tell yourself about your motivation and why you were originally inspired by the scene / concept.
It seems to me that, most often, a painting that is difficult to finish has been started prematurely. Remember, less planning = big problems; more planning means fewer and smaller problems to solve.

happy painting!!

Painting Holiday Workshops in Italy

Watercolour Classes

Beginner's Workshop

very happy with the result so far, i stopped to let my students get stuck in. a little critique:

1. man on right is too big
2. I've got a left painting and a right painting - yikes!!
3. very happy with my two gossipy guys on the left.

I made my man on the right smaller, added some more detail marks and a light value land mass across the river to join up the left and right sides. I also added more dots and dashes to indicate boat repair paraphernalia.​


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